VI. 1. The Life and Correspondence of Charles Lord Metcalfe, late Governor-General of India, Governor of Jamaica, and Governor-General of Canada. 2 vols. By J. W. Kaye. London: 1854. 2. Selections from the Papers of Lord Metcalfe, &c. &c. &c. Edited by J. W. Kaye. London: 1855. 3. The Life and Correspondence of Henry St. George Tucker, late Accountant-General of Bengal, and VII.-Report of Her Majesty's Commissioners appointed to inquire into the Management and Government of the College of Maynooth. Presented to both Houses of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty. Dublin: VIII.-1. Aide Memoire to the Military Sciences. Framed from Contributions of Officers of the different Ser- vices, and edited by a Committee of the Corps of Royal Engineers. London: 1846-52. 2. A Treatise on Naval Gunnery. By General Sir Howard Douglas, Bart. Fourth Edition. London: 3. An Essay on a Proposed New System of Fortifica- tion. By James Fergusson, M. R. I. B. A. London: 4. Topographical Sketches of the Ground before Se- bastopol, with a Description and Remarks. By IX.-A Memoir of the Reverend Sydney Smith. By his Daughter, Lady Holland. With Selections from his ART. I.-Mémoires et Correspondance Politique et Militaire du Roi Joseph. Publiés, annotés, et mis en ordre par A. Du Casse, Aide-de-Camp de S. A. R. le Prince 4. The Visions of Hungsiutsiuen and the Origin of the Kwangsee Insurrection. By the late Rev. Theodore Hamberg of the Basle Evangelical Society. 5. Papers respecting the Civil War in Chins Pre- sented to the House of Lords by command of Her 6. Captain Fishbourne's Impressions of Chin and the 7. The Chinese Missionary Gleaner. Londa: 1853, III-Census of Great Britain, 1851. Education. England and Wales. Report and Tables. London; 1854, 377 IV. The Private Life of an Eastern King. By Member V.-1. The Annotated Paragraph Bible; containing the Old and New Testaments according to the Autho- rized Version, arranged in Paragraphs, with Ex- planatory Notes, &c. Published by the Religious 2. The English Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments, according to the Authorized Version, newly divided into Paragraphs. London: 1853, VI.-1. Of the Plurality of Worlds: an Essay. With a Dialogue on the same Subject. 2nd edition. London: Brewster, K. H., F. R. S., V.P.R. S. Edin. &c. &c. 3rd thousand, corrected and enlarged. London: 3. Essays on the Spirit of the Inductive Philosophy, the Unity of Worlds, and the Philosophy of Crea- tion. By the Rev. Baden Powell, M. A., F.R.S., 4. A few more Words on the Plurality of Worlds. By W. S. Jacob, F. R. A. S., Astronomer to the between the Black Sea and the Caspian. By Baron Jon Haxthausen. 8vo. London: 1854. X.-1. The History of the United States of America. By Richard Hildreth. New York: 1849. 2. Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers of the Colony of Plymouth. By Alexander Young. Boston: 1844. 3. Chronicles of the first Planters of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay. By Alexander Young. Boston: 4. Collections concerning the Early History of the Founders of New Plymouth, the First Colonists of New England. By Joseph Hunter, F.S.A. London : 6. Savage's Edition of Winthrop's Diary. 7. Charters of the Old English Colonies in America, 8. The Scarlet Letter. By Nathaniel Hawthorne XI.-The War from the landing at Gallipoli to the Death of THE EDINBURGH REVIEW, JULY, 1855. No. CCVII. ART. I. — 1. The Works of Dryden: Annotated Edition of the English Poets. By ROBERT BELL. London: 1854. 2. Life and Works of Dryden. By Sir WALTER SCOTT, Bart. Eighteen vols. 8vo. THE world, we believe, is no longer content to entrust the reputation of Dryden to the criticisms of Johnson and Malone, or to the ponderous collections of Mr. Luttrell and Sir Walter Scott. The indifference to the poetry of the eighteenth, and of a great part of the seventeenth century, which has been the fashion of the last fifty years, could but temporarily consign to the last rank of popularity a writer who had stood in the first order of intellectual merit. The era which was constituted by Dryden's genius has a special importance in having established, at a decisive juncture, the original and independent course of literature in England as distinguished from the imitative course of literature in France. We cannot forget our obligations to a period which first displayed the adaptation of our language to nearly every variety of human thought; and we cherish the works of Dryden for a national inspiration of the Satire and the Ode, for a new development of the Historic Drama, and for the reconstruction of the poetry of Romance, in a manner worthy of its imperishable celebrity in the master-writings of Cervantes, of Boccaccio, and of Chaucer. Yet it was reserved to Sir Walter Scott, a hundred and twenty years after Dryden's death, to make the first complete collection of his works. But this collection, though valuable and laborious, was ill-calculated VOL. CII. NO. CCVII. B to diffuse the reputation of the great author whose memory it was justly intended to honour. The edition of Sir Walter Scott consists of eighteen thick octavo volumes, comprising an aggregate of between eight and ten thousand pages, with annotations on so gigantic a scale that, as we disturb the volumes which repose in their ancient dust, they seem to represent the organic remains of antediluvian criticism. Sir Walter, to complete the unattractiveness of his edition, has prefixed to it a portrait, presenting, in contrast to the splendid bust of Dryden in Westminster Abbey, so appalling a physiognomy of the poet, that it might fairly serve to suggest a metempsychosis of the Veiled Prophet of Khorassan. Mr. Bell's edition of Dryden, although it does not pretend to the research and erudition of that by Sir Walter Scott, is carefully, usefully, and very creditably annotated. It has, moreover, this extrinsic advantage, that it is published at a price which will place it within the range of every reader of poetry. For it is certain, that in the imaginative literature of the last few centuries are to be found the truest representations of bygone manners, and the living elements of our social history. Mr. Bell is engaged in publishing on a similar principle editions of other eminent authors; and we trust that the public will support his design. But for the present our attention is absorbed in the works of a writer who has never, we believe, been equalled in this country in point of versatility of talent, and whose power and ingenuity of thought will serve for the instruction of all nations and of all ages. It has been customary for the last half century to decry the writings of Dryden, as identified with what has been termed the French school of poetry. Few theories have been more inconsiderately advanced, or more inconsistently defended. No distinctive characteristic of the French literature of the seventeenth century formed a distinctive characteristic of the contemporary literature of this country. The drama of the two nations, in its most essential incidents, was based upon antagonistic principles. The unities of Time and Place, which constituted the ordinary rule of the French tragedians, scarcely constituted an exception in the plays of Dryden. The Theatre of France received generally the impress of the pure tragedy of the Greeks, while the most celebrated of the tragic works of Dryden assumed the form of the mixed drama of Romance. The use of rhyme is of far higher antiquity in this country than the age of Corneille and Racine; and even this artificial relation to the French Drama disappeared from the latest and the best of Dryden's tragedies. The modern |